Ancient Hoi An city revives gentle manners in tourism

A waiter in a cafe hosts visitors with a smile in Hoi An (Photo courtesy Cafe Faifo)

Quang Nam (VNS/VNA) - The ancient
city of Hoi An has launched a campaign to raise awareness of good-natured
behaviour and hospitality among the community, promoting a friendly tourism
environment to make the city the most popular destination in central Vietnam.

Director of Hoi An’s Culture and Sports Centre Vo
Phung said that the project will focus on limiting poor manners when hosting
tourists in public sites, restaurants and destinations in the old quarter.

He said booming mass tourism and rapid urbanisation
in Hoi An in recent years had partly spoilt the good-natured image of Hoi An’s
people and culture that has been preserved for generations. The project
introduced a code of conduct for local residents, promoting gentle manners, he
added

Phung said the project had implemented a survey
among the community in two residential quarters – Cam Pho and Minh An – two
crowd tourism sites and old houses in the old quarter of Hoi An.

“The city has seen some poor manners among local
people including littering in public sites, honking their horns too much in
traffic, harassing and overcharging tourists and making noise in public
places,” Phung said, adding these bad actions had not been seen in the
community in the past centuries.

“The lifestyle and culture among merchants from
Europe, Japan and China emerged 500 years ago when the city was a busy trading
port, and the cultural values were inherited and preserved by generations.”

Phung, who masterminded the project, said Hoi An
should preserve its cultural values as a heritage of its ancestors to promote a
good-natured society and the development of tourism.

In a recent survey among communities in the old
quarter, only 19 percent of asked residents said they did not litter in public
sites, while 25 percent sounded their horn too much in traffic.

Half of interviewees said they always expressed
their hospitality and willingly offered help to other people, or kept calm in
dealing with public conflicts like accidents.

Phung also said 65 percent respect the lifestyle and
culture of visitors, while 64 percent often offer apologies for wrongdoings.

Half of the people in the two living quarters have
preserved their ancestors’ traditionally polite behaviour.

Vo Tan Tan, a local man in the often-visited Cam
Thanh nipa palm forest, said the tranquillity of Hoi An – a UNESCO-recognised
world heritage site – has been degraded due to an overload of tourism and poor
travel service management.

The tourism hub is burdened by coaches carrying
crowds of tourists on the city’s limited traffic infrastructure, and traffic
congestion is a common sight in the evening.

According to the city’s Culture and Sports Centre,
2.3 million tourists, including two million foreigners, visited the old quarter
in Hoi An. Half of the foreign tourists were from China and the Republic of
Korea.

The number of tourists from Thailand and
Netherlands increased quickly last year, with the rate of 163 percent and 84
percent, respectively.

Visitors from France, Germany, Spain and the US
decreased by between 4 and 13.9 percent in comparison to last year.

Local people have been encouraged to keep the tranquillity
and have been asked to avoid single-use plastic bags, straws and cups.

Hoi An has reserved streets in the old quarter and
an expanded area in the west of the city for use as walking streets from 9am to
11am and from 3pm till 9:30pm during the rainy season and 10pm in summer.
Motorbikes and vehicles with engines have access for four hours per day and at
night time.-VNS/VNA